


It's Not the End of the World

by astudyinfic



Series: Apocalypse AU [1]
Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Four Horsemen, Humor, M/M, The apocalypse meets the Office
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21862249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astudyinfic/pseuds/astudyinfic
Summary: Management isn't for everyone.  Bringing together disparate personalities to work as a team takes a special kind of person.  Not everyone can do it.  And when those disparate personalities have near god-like powers and the ability to destroy worlds, it just becomes even more of a headache.But it's just a job right?  Not like it's the end of the world.
Relationships: Kelly Abbott/Nick O'Flaherty (implied), Zane Garrett/Ty Grady
Series: Apocalypse AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575010
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24





	It's Not the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for this. LOL Blame the C&R server. Enjoy!
> 
> (Thank you to Kahvi for betaing! I appreciate it so much!!!)

Looking over the file, Deuce nodded, pleased with the results of the last apocalypse. Everything had gone so smoothly. The Horsemen had done their jobs with no unfortunate missteps. The disaster had stayed exactly where it was supposed to. Even the paperwork had been filed on time. One really couldn’t ask for a better end of a world. 

It was why he had chosen them, after all. The five horsemen of the apocalypse (religious texts always got the number wrong) and their leader were the best, and his goal had been to put together the best team he could find. After some searching, Deuce found the six men best suited for the job. He’d plucked them from their lives, in different times throughout human history, creating an unstoppable force for chaos and destruction. Which was what they needed to be for their jobs. 

Bringing forth the end of the world wasn’t easy, but one might think it was child’s play by how well they did it. Even if it sometimes spilled over into the office, in the form of elaborate pranks and games. 

When you give six people with their backgrounds nearly unlimited powers, Deuce supposed this was the most likely of outcomes. He often had to act as a father-figure to them all, chastising them when they went too far and something exploded or some lower-level minions got reaped in the cross-fire. Sometimes it amused him that he’d been born after all of them, but time worked differently here. He was simultaneously the youngest and the most ancient. His older brother from the mortal plane was now one of the people who reported to him. It was a bit of a tangle that was hard to work out if you thought about it too hard. 

But despite his relative youth, there was no doubt who was in charge. Regardless of what they might argue, his intelligence was well suited towards the bigger picture, and his personality worked to keep a group of hot-heads in line. He also tended to see things the rest didn’t. Their single-minded focus was good for their jobs but it would be impossible for his.

He loved them all like brothers, including his actual brother. Their mortal lives were sometimes a blur of memories that didn’t quite mesh with their current reality, but Deuce knew that he would know Ty anywhere, and vice versa. And he knew that while Ty had struggled with finding companionship and camaraderie as a mortal, this team filled that hole Ty had in his life while alive. Men he would never have met during his life because of when they all lived, but men that had been chosen by fate to be his brothers in arms.

This team of men from all eras and all lifestyles, the greatest team for destruction the universe could pull together.

There was the army medic plucked from the fields of Gettysburg. He’d done what he could to stop the spread of infection on the battlefield but now, he was the infection, spreading disease wherever he went. 

_Kelly Abbott, Pestilence._

The demolitions expert from the jungles of Vietnam, whose bombs caused irreparable damage to the land around him. That might not have been his intention, but it was the result all the same. The world would never be the same because of him and his specialty.

_Duruand "Digger" Garrigou, Pollution_.

The Sheriff of a small western town, who struggled with denying himself anything, whether it be drinking, or drugs, or cards. One who gave in to whatever temptation struck him at the time. The one who couldn’t deny himself anything before now denied everyone something they needed to live.

_Zane Garrett, Famine._

A blacksmith in ancient Rome, he built the weapons that helped the Holy Roman Empire spread their influence throughout the known world. Countless thousands died at the ends of his weapons and he achieved near mythological status among his people, who prized war above almost all else. 

_Owen Johns, War._

After serving in the Gulf, he became an assassin. The people he killed never saw death coming when he had their eyes on him. He was the man who didn’t miss. Even now, they still don’t see it coming, but he doesn’t need a gun anymore. He is death incarnate. 

_B. Tyler Grady, Death._

A mob boss from Boston in the nineteen fifties, his skill set made him the perfect choice to lead a group of people whose entire purpose was death and destruction. Used to leading a group of murderers, Deuce thought the man was a perfect choice, and as usual, turned out to be correct. The leader of the little group he’d put together, Nick was the best and the worst of them all.

_Nick O’Flaherty, Armageddon._

Bringing any group of people together could be a disaster if personalities clash or any other number of issues. Particularly six people with such hard heads as these. Stubborn didn’t even begin to cover them. And when they were off-duty, they vacillated between acting like brothers (with some exceptions) and wanting to kill one another. Ty, in particular, had a short fuse and the others usually ended up doing more paperwork than they preferred when he reaped them over a stupid argument (so far, Zane was the only one not to end up at the wrong end of Ty’s scythe). Deuce had tried to talk some sense into Ty and, as his brother and boss, he had more luck than most but most of the time it was still a lesson in futility. 

Ty was going to do what Ty was going to do. They’d all learned that the hard way more times than they wished to admit.

But when they came together for work, they were a force to be reckoned with. That moment when they went from being just normal guys to revealing their true forms as beings with almost godlike power, the team as a whole underwent a transformation that couldn’t be properly put into words. Like the electricity before the storm, like the smell of ozone after a lightning strike, like the deepest, most profound religious experience, it was something that could only be felt to be understood. 

Deuce understood, of course. He’d been there every time they went out into the field, both in a physical respect in the office and in the spiritual respect out there with them. And when he wasn’t, one of his representatives took his place. 

What most mortals didn’t understand was that his horsemen were neither good nor evil. They reported to Nick who reported to both Upstairs (Deuce), and Downstairs, a horrible fucker named Burns that Deuce always dreaded dealing with. They were a necessity, a part of the natural order. They were as good or evil as a storm or an earthquake. The results of their work were a tragedy to those experiencing them but necessary to the universe as a whole. The horsemen were the ultimate chaotic neutral. 

But that didn’t mean that everything in the universe was a neutral entity. There was most definitely good and evil out there, represented first by Deuce and Burns, but each had a representative who worked out in the field for them. They were, appropriately, titled Good and Evil. 

Good, a man who kept the peace between his friends, worked as the moral center for everyone who knew him. He’d been a father, a friend, a son, and a soldier in his human life. And now, after working his way up the ranks, was the ultimate being of Good. His name was Elias Sanchez and sometimes he seemed to care too much. 

His colleague was the opposite. Always looking out for himself, regardless of who got in his way, he changed loyalties with the tides as a human, leaving death and suffering, misery and annoyance everywhere he went. Now he represented the worst of the worst in the world, the things that caused pain for the sake of pain. His name was Liam Bell and he was Evil.

Deuce’s plan had been to keep the Horsemen away from Good and Evil. They were supposed to remain neutral and either of those men was persuasive enough to sway them to his side. But it seemed no one in this department could be trusted, even the personification of Good in the universe. 

Eli befriended all of them, offering the advice of a big brother and the friendship of a brother in arms. He never tried to talk them out of doing what they were doing, only offered a kind word and a gentle suggestion that went much farther than any threat or guilt could have. Deuce noticed changes in them as they interacted with Eli and even as they talked about Eli when he wasn’t around. He brought a calm and a happiness to them. One that, at times, they desperately needed.

To say Deuce was horrified when they all befriended Evil would be an understatement. The last thing an apocalypse needed was to be motivated by anything other than the natural order of the universe. But Liam had a way of getting his claws into them, one at a time. And when Death and Evil fell into bed with one another, he almost pulled his hair out, wanting to scream that Ty was being a fucking idiot. Thankfully Ty came to his senses after not long and had someone far better suited for him now, but it had been a harrowing few moments where Deuce wondered if he would need to replace Ty on the team. 

Liam Bell had a way of creating chaos where none needed to be. It was why Liam was so good at his job. And it was why Deuce often wanted to have Ty reap him several times a day.

Ty getting distracted, first by Evil and then by Famine (a relationship which Deuce approved of so much more), was the reason he finally broke down and got them each an assistant. Understudies, if you will, though so far none of them had to go out in the field which was probably a good thing. Julian Cross could handle Death’s duties just fine, and when Ty and Zane finally decided to retire to some other dimension where they could actually live the rest of eternity without having to destroy civilizations every few days, Julian would be taking the mantle. But Cameron Jacobs was most definitely not ready to go out in the field as Pestilence. Cameron and Kelly got along just fine, but there was a detachedness that Kelly had from his work that Cameron had yet to develop. He couldn't picture Cameron delighting in entrails or exploded corpses quite the way Kelly did. Kelly would be a difficult one to replace.

He knew that most people looked at Zane’s understudy with an air of confusion. At first glance, the choice didn’t make much sense. The former detective from Boston did not seem a likely candidate for Famine, but his reliance on caffeine above all else convinced Deuce that he would be perfect. Zane and Hagan got on well and they were probably the least dysfunctional pair there was. Hagan would make a great Famine one day, but hopefully not for a few more centuries. Deuce was loathe to lose Zane, even if he knew how happy it would make Ty and Zane both.

Owen and Preston barely spoke but they had a love of weaponry that bonded them together under the mantle of War, even when the conversation didn’t flow. The two of them worked together on many, non-apocalyptic occasions and if Deuce didn’t know better, he would say Owen and Preston had worked together as mortals as well. They could anticipate the other’s needs, often handing over ammunition without the other asking. It would be scary if it wasn’t exactly what he needed from his team.

The only Horseman currently without an assistant was Digger, not because he was hard to work with or because it was difficult to find someone with the necessary skill set. It was because no one quite had the zeal for the job that the new Pollution would have to have. Just looking at the global climate change crisis on Earth showed just how good he was at what he did. He had a couple of people in mind that might be able to step up and fill Digger’s shoes, but it didn’t look like he’d be giving up the job anytime soon, so Deuce had time to think about it still.

He didn’t like to think about the day when all of them (besides Digger who would probably be doing this even when there were no worlds left to destroy) moved on to other jobs or retirement. It would be hard to replace them, but he thought the assistants had the makings of a good group. They would probably be okay with a few millennia more experience. Besides, Preston, Cameron, and Julian were all friends, so if he lost a group of Horsemen all at once, chances were good that the new group would still function as a team.

When Nick finally stopped trying to convince himself he wasn’t head over heels in love with Pestilence, Deuce’s first choice for a replacement would be Ty. Their minds worked in eerily similar ways and he had no doubt that Ty could step in and take over with little issue (though he would probably end up convincing Zane to do all the paperwork). But since Ty was busy with his own role, he couldn’t work as Nick’s assistant either. So, Deuce found someone on Earth who was almost as scary as both of them. Combined. The small stature did nothing to hide the righteous fury that burned inside her, making her red hair almost look like fire bursting out from her soul. She kept every single one of them in line with a single glance and he’d never seen anything funnier. If someday he needed an assistant, Michelle Clancy would be his choice. For now, however, she was second in command of the Armageddon department, and probably the most fearsome of them all.

If anyone had asked him what he thought the afterlife would be like, Deuce would never have guessed an office building that directed the lives of every being to ever live, with jobs and paperwork and all the inter-office politics that one would expect in any normal human job. And sometimes he wondered if maybe he made a wrong turn after death since there were obviously better places to spend eternity. The person he replaced when he took this job, a man named McCoy, had retired to some lovely dimension where he could do nothing but relax until the end of time. Deuce wanted that sometimes. 

But then he had to mediate an argument between Owen and Kelly when Pestilence ‘accidentally’ exploded someone in his office, or write a memo telling Ty and Zane to stop fucking in supply cabinets, and he realized no one else would have the patience to put up with their shenanigans for more than a few days, let alone a few millennia, and he knew he was exactly where he needed to be.

Even if he did want to reap the lot of them and start over more often than not.

**Author's Note:**

> To be fair, I read a fic a LONG time ago (in some fandom I don't even remember) about the afterlife running like a business. After seeing Good Omens, it only made me want to write something like that more. And who doesn't want to see what Zanewinder could do on a cosmic scale?
> 
> ~ ~ ~
> 
> Come yell at me on [tumblr](http://astudyinfic.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/astudyinfic)
> 
> Also, we made a [Cut & Run discord channel](https://discord.gg/KFfErkb) if anyone is interested in joining and yelling at us about the books we all love.


End file.
